Harder to hide earnings from the sunshine list

Oshawa This Week

It will be harder for the salaries of public servants making more than $100,000 to be kept secret with the closure of a loophole that allowed some big earners to stay off the “sunshine list.”
But Ontarians won’t notice the changes — announced Friday (Nov. 23) by Finance Minister Dwight Duncan — until 2014, when the 2013 list is disclosed.
More than 2,000 public servants in Durham took home six figure salaries last year.
Duncan has amended the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act to ensure that approximately 220 people paid on a per diem basis, or by retainers, also divulge their salaries on the annual list.
“Because of the oversight, directors or office holders … were omitted from the Sunshine List,” Duncan said in a statement. “I'm pleased to say that we've closed this loophole through a regulation.”
The Liberals came under fire from opposition parties after it was revealed former part-time Workplace Safety and Insurance Board chair Steve Mahoney’s nearly $150,000 salary was never revealed during his six-year tenure because he was paid on a per diem basis.
Mahoney was earning a per diem of $550 for each day he worked, on top of expenses he filed, like $13,740 for a three-day conference in Australia and $272 to buy a GPS during trip to Myrtle Beach.
The Liberals made the WSIB chair position full-time, on a salary of $188,000, when they replaced Mahoney with Progressive Conservative Elizabeth Witmer in May.
The change would not affect cases like former ORNGE CEO Chris Mazza who earned $1.4 million a year without it being publicly disclosed.
Mazza, founder of the government-funded, non-profit air ambulance service, didn’t have his salary listed because it was concealed under a group of for-profit consulting companies, exempting it from the Act.
Progressive Conservative MPP Peter Shurman, his party’s finance critic, said the amendment is “too little, too late.”
“These are the most unaccountable guys in the world,” said Shurman. “These guys ever only close loopholes when they get caught.”
Shurman welcomed the changes, but said it’s “nonsensical” that it took so long for the Liberals to act.
New Democrat House Leader Gilles Bisson said the overdue changes should be implemented sooner than the 2013 list due in 2014.
“It wouldn’t be all that hard for people to report this upcoming year,” said Bisson, adding the public has a right to know. “The process is all there and those on per diem should be on the 2012 list.”
Durham’s top earners include medical and administative staff at
Lakeridge Health Corporation and Rouge Valley Health System, senior
staff at local municipalities, police officers and staff at Durham
College, UOIT and local school boards.